Politicizing Tragedy

I have observed over the years that whenever there is something like a school shooting in the U.S., there are two reactions. The progressive side calls for gun reform; the gun-loving right's political stooges proclaim, "Now is not the time to politicize tragedy."

Yet that is exactly what Benjamin Netanyahu, a profoundly evil man, in my view, did after the terrible murder of the young Israeli embassy officials in Washington.

I was frankly disgusted by the Prime Minister's words, his exploitation of a tragedy for his own selfish purposes. His words also carry an assumption that jewish lives matter far more than the over 50,000 Gazans who have thus far been sacrifice in the retaliation for the October 7th attacks. The collective punishment of Palestinians, a war crime in itself, is normalized as an appropriate response to that attack, which took 1400 Israeli lives

An I am not alone in this disgust. Martin Regg Cohn, a man who spent many years as a Middle East correspondent, has this to say about Netanyahu.

Netanyahu’s primary purpose is to save his political skin at home.

This is a domestic political stratagem masquerading as military strategy.

Hamas has already been largely eviscerated. To eradicate the militant movement entirely, as the prime minister keeps promising, would force more innocent people to pay an incalculable price that no one should bear.

In his pursuit of political salvation, his evasion of any responsibility for the attack, he has alienated much of the world,

Last Sunday, Canada joined France and the U.K. in releasing a formal statement that condemned Israel for its renewed deployment of firepower and weaponization of food shipments in Gaza.

“The Israeli government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable,” the three governments declared, adding pointedly that some of Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers had crossed a line by suggesting ethnic cleansing:

“We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate.”

The European Union and the United Nations have also called out Israel for withholding food and medical aid in a cynical bid to demoralize an entire population so that people will turn on Hamas.

Netanyahu, however, is nothing if not brazen in his defiance of the rest of the world. Indeed, his response to the above condemnation was unequivocal, accusing 

Canada, the United Kingdom and France of giving Hamas “a huge prize” by threatening to take action against Israel over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

This defiance is made possible by the absence of countervailing influences within i his cabinet.

His early war cabinet — which brought in opposition National Unity party chair Benny Gantz and then-defence minister Yoav Gallant has been disbanded (Gantz departed and Gallant was fired as defence minister for dissenting from the most outlandish plans).

Now, the prime minister depends for his political survival on bellicose cabinet ministers from far-right parties that do not countenance co-existence with Palestinians in peacetime or wartime.

Regg Cohn ends with a lacerating assessment of Israel's leader:

His calculations are based on personal political survival rather than Israel’s national interest, its international standing, and Palestinian co-existence.

That, by all sane metrics, makes Netanyahu manifestly unfit to hold public office. 

UPDATE: Here is Netanyahu at his demagogic 'best' as he rebukes Canada, the UK and France over its condemnation of Israel's starvation of Gazans:

 

The Latest Atrocity Out Of Syria

How can a government treat its people like this? The question, sadly, is a rhetorical one, and the scenes that follow are hard to watch, yet another reminder of the terrible things human are capable of inflicting upon one another.

The War Crimes of Our Political Leaders

Recently I wrote a brief post directing readers to a story written by Chris Hedges. Hedges' piece, entitled The Crucifixion of Tomas Young, conveyed the very sad story, one that has probably been lived out many times, of a young man, paralyzed in Iraq in 2004, who has made the decision to die by refusing to take nourishment. His is an age-old tale of a naive but well-intentioned response to the patriotic call to war by a government adept at cynically manipulating its populace for its own immoral purposes (think access to oil as an example) and then ultimately washing its hands of the consequences of that manipulation.

Of course, war criminals like George Bush, Dick Cheney and Tony Blair continue on their self-promoting way, enveloped by and insulated within a bubble of self-righteous hypocrisy that few dare to puncture.

Yesterday, The Huffington Post wrote about Tomas Young and his impending death. One of his legacies will be this letter, addressed to Bush and Cheney, indicting them for the great evil they have committed. I am reproducing only a small part below, but I hope everyone will take the time to read the entire missive:

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

It is, without question a letter that all political leaders need to read and consider before they so blithely and heedlessly consign another generation of young people to disfigurement and death. And that includes Messieurs Chretien and Harper, under whose watches 158 young Canadians lost their lives in Afghanistan.